


In Anticipation of Belonging

by OddlyExquisite



Series: Green Things [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Love Letters, M/M, Mutually Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 20:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7069213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddlyExquisite/pseuds/OddlyExquisite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>This is what it means to love a Jedi:</em> <br/>Obi-Wan ponders the meaning of home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Anticipation of Belonging

**Author's Note:**

> 1) All hail the magical Merry_Amelie, my attentive, wonderful Beta! Without her, this series would not be possible.
> 
> (Side note to my readers: I highly recommend choosing a Beta who, beyond having grammatical knowledge & the like, is also very well-read in the fandom. This will turn out to be invaluable in many ways, trust me.)

* * *

 

For many species, the concept of transience is a familiar one, understood instinctively in the marrow of their bones, passed down from generation to generation long after their ancestors had turned to agriculture, had given up roaming beneath the stars. There is something romantic about it, Obi-Wan thinks, about that old kind of wandering. Something about the idea of having no home except that which you build within yourself, the idea of a freedom so vast you could travel the universe twice over and find yourself mesmerized, every time.

Obi-Wan remembers listening to the miners' tales on Allyuen, gathered around the firebowls at break time, a miner on either side and Qui-Gon across from him, his Master's eyes intent on the flames between them. (The desert was always cool at night.)

"It's easier this way," one miner had said, finishing a tale of ages past, when the desert had been verdant and green, "easier to call a place home when it's tangible."

"And you, Ser Jedi," another miner asks, "What place do you call home?"

And Obi-Wan doesn't know how to explain it, doesn't know how to explain to such land-bound men that the Jedi never dealt in the tangible. He doesn't know how to explain that they built their homes in something invisible. He wants to say:  _'Here, beside him. This is my home',_ or:  _'It's here, in the breath of my body'_. He wants to tell them:  _'I carry it with me, always'_.

But he doesn't say any of those things, in the end, because it is Qui-Gon who answers, who says, "The Jedi shall have no home but that which they find in the Force. This is the law eternal."

Obi-Wan has lost count of how many times he's heard that sentence throughout his apprenticeship. His Master turns back to the fire.

_The Jedi shall have no home. This is the law eternal._

 

*********

Two days after returning from Flarrem, he is dreaming.

_...cold, metal floor against his knees...the stench of burned flesh thick in the air, and Qui-Gon limp, heavy in his arms...they are alone, silence broken only by his ragged breathing and..._

Obi-Wan wakes with a start, heart pounding. He waits until his pulse returns to normal before wiping the sweat from his brow, realizing that he had fallen asleep on the couch of his common room. He glances at the chrono -- it is late. Well past midnight. Most of the Temple would be sleeping.

The common room is admittedly unwelcoming. He hadn't been in Temple long enough to make it feel lived in. The walls are bare and white -- a stark contrast to the rooms he'd shared with his Master, full of his childhood scribbles and Qui-Gon's penciled-in growth charts. This room is all functionality: bare floors, one couch, a dining-room set, and a mostly empty bookcase. 

 _Stop it_ , he tells himself sternly.

He does not need a Master to make this place a home.

There is a letter waiting for him on the floor beneath his door, only half sealed, crumpled where fingers had clutched the envelope too hard, as if the person had been in a rush to deliver it.

_When, after a long absence, a man safely returns from afar, his relatives, friends, and well-wishers welcome him home on arrival._

Obi-Wan frowns at the calligraphy for a moment, and sets it aside to make tea. (How long had this person been writing to him?) 

_Friends and well-wishers..._

He grabs his datapad on impulse, and scrolls through the profiles in the Temple database, hope welling in the depths of his chest that maybe, just maybe--

Qui-Gon Jinn (Status): Off-Planet, Mission #2399947

Obi-Wan sets his datapad beside his untouched tea and goes back to bed.

 

*********

A few days later, Obi-Wan sees him.

Qui-Gon Jinn striding through the hallway, pinning up his hair as he walks to the commissary for breakfast. Obi-Wan aches at the familiar sight: his Master, fierce, impatient, pushing his hair back from his face. It is only then he realizes that Qui-Gon is not alone. He is with another Master. They look happy.

They had left Qui-Gon's rooms together.

Obi-Wan bows briefly when Qui-Gon comes closer, a ritual bow from Knight to Master. For some reason, the necessity of that ritual hurts more than the acute awareness that he and his Master are, for whatever reason, no longer the same.

Qui-Gon nods, indigo eyes unreadable.

"Master."

"Obi-Wan, you look well. How was your mission to Flarrem?"

"Painful, actually. I didn't receive nearly as kind a welcome as you did, last time."

"Yes, well, from experience I think I can say that I would have preferred yours."

"You didn't enjoy the...ah... _entertainment_ , Master?" He winks at the other Master as they walk toward the commissary. "What sort of Jedi declines the hospitality offered to him by his host planet?"

"They were Hutts, Obi-Wan."

"Yes, and they must have trained  _very_ hard to be able to do that table dance!"

"You," Qui-Gon says fondly over his companion's laughter, "are an absolute terror."

 

*********

Before Obi-Wan had been Knighted, before Naboo, it had been something of a joke between them that Obi-Wan had chosen Qui-Gon, and not the other way around.

He thinks about it later and realizes that he shouldn't be so surprised. Qui-Gon had Anakin now. The Chosen One. The one Qui-Gon had chosen. The one Qui-Gon had wanted. Obi-Wan thinks of the boy, the innocent, homesick, sun-hunger of the child, and tries to tell himself that his jealousy is unwarranted.

_Hold a thing too tightly, and you will smother it..._

It doesn't work.

 

*********

Qui-Gon had always considered himself to be a master of the unspoken. The mark of a good diplomat was one who didn't need to say anything in order to get his point across. But after nearly four months of having barely seen his former apprentice, he has to wonder how useful the skill really is.

Because he's left a lot of things unsaid, when it comes to Obi-Wan.

Weighty things like 'How are you?', 'What happened to your braid?', and 'Are you angry with me?'. Little things like 'I am incredibly proud of you', 'Naboo was not your fault', and 'I miss your tea in the morning'. Pathetic, meaningless things like 'Why?' and 'Wasn't I your friend?'

And it should have been simple, really. He was a Jedi Master, after all. It didn't take a Jedi Master to send a transmission or pay a visit to his Padawan's quarters. But whenever he saw Obi-Wan in Temple, walking through the halls, the commissary, laughing and talking with his friends, he'd remember: Obi-Wan hadn't sought him out, either.

 

*********

"Of course, this could all be an elaborate joke," Bant says as she examines the latest letter, "Maybe someone just wants to lure you beneath the archives for...you know."

"I haven't been in half of those rooms," Obi-Wan mutters, handing Bant a cup of tea, "What goes on down there, anyway?"

"No clue," Bant says, blushing hot pink, "Definitely not popular make-out spots."

"Gods, really? Don't they store all of the unstable archive displays there, now?"

"Yeah."

"Kind of dangerous, isn't it? At least that explains the marks on your back that one time."

"Those weren't from the displays, Obi."

"...One more for the trauma vault."

"You're welcome."

"How is Garen's mouth even that big?"

"Shut up."

They sit across from each other at Obi-Wan's dining-room table. There is a pleasant silence for a few moments. They have taken to spending more and more evenings like this: ensconced in either of their rooms with cups of tea, just enjoying the other's company. The Mon Calamari had started complaining that Obi-Wan had been looking a bit downcast, and needed some decent company to cheer him up. While that wasn't entirely the case, Obi-Wan was grateful for her presence.

It is Obi-Wan who breaks the silence. "Bant."

"Hmm?"

"I saw Qui-Gon earlier. With someone."

"You mean like, a lover?"

"Mhmm."

"So that's what's wrong."

"Well, yes."

"Does he know that you...?"

"No."

"And do you know if he...does he feel..." Bant hesitates.

Obi-Wan doesn't meet her eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to hear about my incredibly heroic deeds on Flarrem?"

"Sure, Obi," she says gently.

 

*********

The concept of 'home', for a Jedi, is an elusive one. It is not as if the topic never comes up, and many Jedi do, in fact, refer to Coruscant as 'home'. But it isn't the planet that they're talking about when they say,  _'I'll be back soon'._

It's different for every Jedi, but no one ever means the planet.

 

*********

Obi-Wan's pinewood box had been a gift.

This was his earliest memory; finding the box beneath the pillow of his bed in the creche. (He could not have been older than five or six, at the time.) He remembered cradling it as though it had been alive, turning it over and over in his hands, palms brushing the smooth, strange material, the rough patches where the varnish had worn away, inhaling the delicate scent of it.

"Do you know what it is, Obi-Wan?" his Creche-Master had asked, approaching so silently he hadn't heard her footsteps, "It's wood."

The look on his face must have betrayed his confusion; he had heard of wood before, of course. It came from enormous plants called 'trees' -- the giants of the forest, towering far above the tallest of beings. Obi-Wan had never seen one in person, and was unfamiliar with the smell of a lifetime spent in the soil. (Later, when he was allowed to go to the meditation gardens, he would sit beneath his favorite pine and let that burnt-sun-soft-wind scent soak into his skin.)

"Did you know," the Creche-Master had asked, sitting next to him, "that there are thousands of different kinds of trees?"

Obi-Wan had shaken his head 'no'.

"This wood comes from a pine tree, little one. Smell it," the Master had encouraged him, "this is the smell of green things."

"Green things," Obi-Wan had echoed, in an awed whisper.

"It is said that pine wood brings prosperity and good fortune." The Creche-Master had touched his shoulder affectionately. "Use the box well, little one; keep your wishes inside. A wish is like a green thing: tend to it carefully, and it will blossom."

Later, when the Creche-Master had gone to check on the other children, Obi-Wan had taken the letters he'd stuffed beneath his mattress, smoothed them out, and placed them reverently in the magic box. (What power green things had, Obi-Wan remembered thinking, what wondrous, incredible power!)

Before he went to sleep, he made sure to squeeze his eyes tight and whisper his wish into the cool, night air.

 

*********

Qui-Gon remembers one of the last conversations they'd had before Naboo.

It had been on Mandalore, in a domed city.

_"Do you ever reply to them?" Qui-Gon asks one night, while they are sitting around the hearth-fire of their guest quarters. Why the fire was lit in the middle of a desert was beyond him -- perhaps it was a symbolic attempt to 'smoke them out', as it were. (Their mission here had been rocky, at best.) Either way, it had been good practice for Obi-Wan in adjusting his body temperature._

_Obi-Wan is on the floor, mending a tear in Qui-Gon's robes, his long, nimble fingers making quick work of the task. (Qui-Gon never asked him to do his mending, but the fact that he did it anyway meant something.) "I'm sorry, Master?"_

_"The letters. Do you ever reply to them?"_

_"No, Master." His Padawan's face is golden in the firelight, lash-shadows long on his cheeks._

_"Truly?" Qui-Gon considers. "You aren't curious?"_

_"There is a Huttese saying, Master: Curiosity is the willing confession of ignorance." Obi-Wan looks up with the cheeky smile Qui-Gon knows is just for him. "Most of the letters aren't serious, and I'm far from ignorant."_

_"There is also a Corellian saying, Padawan mine: Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness."_

_"As you say," Obi-Wan replies smoothly, "Either way, I'm focused on my Knighthood."_

_"It will not be too long, now."_

_Obi-Wan shrugs noncommittally._

_Qui-Gon hesitates. "Perhaps you've missed some things because of your focus, Padawan."_

_Obi-Wan fixes him with a knowing look, the one that never fails to steal Qui-Gon's breath. (Obi-Wan calls him a storyteller, but if he is a storyteller then surely Obi-Wan is a prophet. He-Who-Holds-the-Sky-in-His-Eyes...)_

_"If my potential lovers thought as you do, my Master," Obi-Wan answers firmly, "perhaps it's_ they _who have missed something, not I."_

_Qui-Gon turns his gaze to Obi-Wan's hands and counts his stitches like most people count sheep._

_One..._

_Two..._

_Three..._

 

*********

This is what it means to love a Jedi:

You learn to accept the inevitable fairly quickly. The inevitable being the fact that you will, most likely, never be loved in return. The fact that, even if you are, you will always _(always)_ come second to duty. The fact that even if your love was returned, someday, sooner rather than later, your lover would die.

(These facts have been drilled into your very core, like the image of your Master, sunlit and fierce in the Council chambers, explaining that he no longer wants you.)

And yet, you find that you cannot stymie the neglected wish that blossoms in your ribs every time your Master smiles at you. Cannot halt the rush of blood to your face when your Master catches you staring at mealtimes, your open affection uncovered and steaming like the soup pot between you.

It is during these moments that you find yourself wondering why he doesn't stop you, why he doesn't tell you that your attachment is unhealthy, unwanted, and dangerous for a Jedi. You realize that it is probably quite likely that he does not notice it, at all.

You learn to accept the inevitable fairly quickly, and so you accept that no amount of meditation and discipline could ever override the importance of your Master in your life. You accept that you will always wonder whether or not, if you had seen it coming, you could have stopped it somehow, and saved the both of you a good deal of grief in the end. You will wonder if you should feel guilty, for building a home in him and trapping him inside of it.

It isn't that you haven't tried to let it go, to let  _him_ go, because you have. You've distanced yourself both physically and emotionally, but lately, you're beginning to wonder whether this has done more harm than good. You wonder if he is happy.

You wonder if the only way to let him go is to demolish your home from the inside out.

 

*****


End file.
